What Counts as a ‘Social and Ethical Issue’ in Nanotechnology?

Abstract: As ‘social and ethical
issues’ becomes a recurring phrase in the
community paying attention to nanotechnology research, a crucial
question becomes: what counts as a social and ethical issue? A typical
list includes privacy, environmental health and safety, media hype, and
other apparently unrelated issues. This article surveys those issues
and suggests that concerns about fundamental concepts of ethics, such
as fairness, justice, equity, and especially power, unite the various
issues identified as ‘social and ethical issues’ in nanotechnology.

1. Introduction

As ‘social and ethical issues’ becomes a
recurring
phrase in the community paying attention to nanotechnology research, a
crucial question becomes: what counts as a social and ethical issue?[1]
Even the field in which the question occurs is in dispute: is it
‘nanotechnology’, ‘nanoscience and nanotechnology’, ‘nanoscale science
and technology’, or ‘nanoscale science, engineering, and technology’?
Each of these labels implies something different about the relationship
between inquiry, research, development, and application. If we set
aside these differences, which are likely to be examined in other
papers contributed to these special issues, and constitute a single
‘nano’ field, we are still faced with boundary issues. For example,
questions about the ethical implications of creating and deploying
nano-sized particles, which might or might not have deleterious health
effects on humans or animals who inhale them, have been taken up by the
technical research community as ‘safety’ questions.[2]
Is a safety question an ethical question? Who decides? This brief paper
is an attempt to begin to ask these questions in a deeper way, to
identify what underlying principle(s) might define ‘social and ethical
issues’ in nanotechnology.

2. Overview

Much of the excitement about nanotechnology
exists because it offers the possibility of many societal benefits,
such as reduced energy use, better medical treatment, and lower costs
for computing and other common technologies (Amato 1999). Many
observers have also expressed concerns about risks associated with
nanotechnology – environmental risks, privacy risks, social and
political risks (Arnall 2003, ETC Group 2003, Joy 2000). In that
context, they have called for studies on ‘social and ethical issues’ in
nanotechnology. But there is a danger in using the label for studies
associated with risk, for it might imply that social and ethical issues
are associated only with potential dangers of nanotechnology, or that
the risks of nanotechnology will outweigh the benefits.

To say that there are ‘social and ethical
issues’
(SEI) in nanotechnology assumes no position on the question of risks
and benefits. Indeed, it is not even clear that talking in terms of
‘risks versus benefits’ is a useful way to approach nanotechnology.
Rather, to say that there are social and ethical issues is to say that
science and technology exist only in a social context, and that we
cannot understand how science and technology develop without
understanding both the social conditions that produce them and the
simultaneous scientific and technological conditions that produce
society. Better understanding of the interaction of science,
technology, and society at many levels of the polity leads, I assert,
to more informed decisions about how to invest in science and
technology, when and how to regulate – or not regulate – technological
development, how to address inevitable ethical challenges, and so on.
Note that this perspective, of mutual interdependence of science,
technology, and society, is why I prefer the term ‘social and ethical
issues’ to the phrase used by some nanotechnology funders, most notably
the U.S. National Science Foundation, which is ‘societal and ethical
implications’ of nanotechnology. The latter phrase implies that science
and technology come first, followed by ‘implications’. The history of
science and technology does not support such a perspective.

Much of the promise of nanotechnology, and
the
early identification of social issues associated with nanotechnology,
appears in documents associated with the U.S. National Nanotechnology
Initiative (Roco et al. 2001, Roco & Bainbridge 2005). In
the remainder of this paper, I will adopt this necessarily American
perspective, while acknowledging that similar discussions are being
held in other countries.[3]
Some of the major categories of social and ethical issues identified in
the American documents include the following.

Economic and political implications of
potential technology

These issues include the economic value of new
materials and new industries created through nanotechnology, as well as
economic dislocations caused by shifts in investment and the decline of
industries and companies tied to displaced technologies. Other
implications might include increased lifespans made possible through
nano-based medicines or diagnostic techniques, leading to greater
numbers of active senior citizens seeking employment and active
participation in the political process.

Science and education implications

Nanotechnology is perceived by many as an
interdisciplinary field, requiring knowledge of chemistry, physics,
engineering, and, for many applications, biology.[4]
But although American science education reforms of the 1990s led to
recommendations for more interdisciplinary science studies in primary
and secondary schools (National Research Council 1996), countervailing
political pressures for instruction in basic topics and for
accountability have stymied many reformers in their attempts to change
curricula. Nanotechnology proponents therefore perceive a need for
changes in educational systems in order to prepare students for careers
in nanotechnology, whether as technicians with only minimal
post-secondary training or as cutting-edge doctoral-level researchers.

That nanotechnology will have impact in a
great
many areas of application is assumed by most participants in the field.
A listing of ‘medicine, environment, space, and national security’ is
in some ways only a listing of areas where the political imperatives
for funding mean that applications are likely to appear sooner rather
than later. Put another way, acknowledging that public funding is
available precisely because these are areas important to society means
that society expects developments in science and technology to
contribute to improved medical care, environmental quality, space
exploration, and national security – and supporters of nanotechnology
expect to produce those developments. Thus, any advance in
nanotechnology necessarily has societal implications.

Social, ethical, legal, and cultural
implications

The list of social, ethical, legal, and
cultural
implications includes such issues as privacy, avoiding a ‘nano-divide’,
unintended consequences, university/industry relationships and
potential conflicts of interest, research ethics, and so on. It is
widely acknowledged that, precisely because the applications of
nanotechnology are not yet clear, neither are the ethical issues clear.
And yet, many argue, the nano community must begin to address these
issues now, before they overwhelm nanotechnology and derail potential
benefits.

The NSF and other funding agencies are to be
congratulated for recognizing and actively promoting discussion of SEI,
which required the active work of a small group of socially-concerned
scientists working in research centers, federal agencies, and
legislative offices (Radin 2003). Yet the categories they have produced
and that appear in other reports (including, for example, the June 2004
British report cited in note 3, which contains separate chapters on
regulatory, environmental, and ‘social and ethical’ issues) require
exploration. An odd element of the categorization is that it separates
‘social, ethical, legal, and cultural implications’ from economic,
national security, workplace, and other issues that are also
fundamentally social, legal, and cultural in their construction and
implications. This, then, is the problem to be addressed: What are the
implications of setting boundaries that separate ‘social and ethical’
issues from other inherently social and ethical issues? To address the
problem, we need to determine if there is any principle that can
distinguish among these topics, or if there is some underlying
principle that can better be used to characterize what counts as a
social and ethical issue.

3. Building from the bottom

A recurring metaphor in nanotechnology
research is between ‘top-down’, i.e. defining a nanostructure
and then etching away material until only the nanostructure is left,
and ‘bottom-up’, i.e.
building nanostructures atom-by-atom or molecule-by-molecule. In the
spirit of that metaphor, and without taking sides in the technical
debate about whether ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’ is a superior approach
to ‘real’ nano, I suggest that the confusion of categories and labels
described above comes from an attempt to pre-define what counts as a
social or ethical issue. Whether deliberate or not, the attempt to set
boundaries is necessarily an exercise of power that precludes our
ability to understand the properties inherent in issues that make them
social or ethical. Instead, I will try in what follows to avoid
boundaries, to survey many of the issues identified by others in ways
that allow them to be seen in the same space – and so show what the
connecting principle is. From the bottom up, I will try to build a
principle for identifying social and ethical issues in nanotechnology.

The following list of issues and questions
comes
from perusing many of the reports and discussions about SEI of the last
few years.[5]
The list is not intended to be comprehensive, but I believe it covers
the main issues identified by others.

Environmental issues

Environmental issues associated with
nanotechnology are currently, in winter 2005, the most prominent in the
news, and ‘environmental and safety issues’ is becoming a standard
discussion among the nanotechnology community. The public notice of
these issues was most noticeably drawn by a Washington Post
article in February 2004 (Weiss 2004) but other news has continued to
keep the topic current. To some people, these are ‘technical’ issues,
separate from social and ethical issues. To others, the inherently
social process of identifying what constitutes a risk and what
constitutes safety make these issues ‘social and ethical’ ones.
Generally, nanotechnology proponents argue that making things much
smaller will make them more energy efficient, thus reducing energy
demands. Others argue that the presence of very tiny manufactured
nano-particles in the environment may cause health problems associated
with inhalation. Some people associated with nanotechnology have also
expressed concern about the environmental impacts of nano-manufacturing
processes, particularly those involving large amounts of water. Will
nano-manufacturing face some of the same environmental challenges
regarding toxic waste streams as semi-conductor manufacturing currently
does? Still others, including prominent nanotechnology researchers,
have called attention to the difficulties in stating with any
confidence what the environmental issues might be, because too little
data is available (Colvin 2003). In this state of uncertainty about implications,
the issues
remain: Who is likely to bear the risks of any environmental challenges
– investors, workers, or communities near the manufacturing plants? Who
will reap the benefits of environmentally-friendly materials –
producers, consumers, or anyone who breathes the air and drinks the
water? How will decisions about risks and benefits be made, and by
whom? What influences will shape those decisions?

Workforce issues

As noted above, the need for people ready to
work in a nanotechnology-enabled world leads to a variety of needs.
Some are specific: training programs for technicians, undergraduate and
master’s level programs for engineers and managers of nanotechnology
companies, and advanced research training for doctoral and
post-doctoral students. Others are more general, such as the suggestion
from the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society that all
research students be required to study social and ethical issues (Royal
Academy of Engineering and Royal Society 2004). Most far-reachingly,
people concerned about the workforce argue that, at least, American
education must change to make students capable of working in
interdisciplinary advanced technology arenas. But a key element of
American education is the commitment to local control. Unlike most
countries, the United States has no mandatory national curriculum; in
addition, funding for education varies dramatically by state and
locale. Some locales will invest in new curricula or new approaches to
education that foster technological innovation, while others – even if
community leaders wish to try new methods – may be stymied by lack of
access to money or technological expertise. Given competing priorities
for educational resources, including time, how will decisions about
preparing students be made? How will the best techniques for training
students be identified? Will some students find easier access to new
ideas, techniques, and information than others? To what extent will
issues of financing, ideology, local politics, and local industrial
base shape these decisions?

Privacy issues

Nanotechnology is likely to lead to smaller,
faster, cheaper computers. The notion of ‘ubiquitous computing’ with
all the benefits it promises becomes much easier to develop with
nano-based processors and memory. The proliferation of powerful
computers, however, will make it even easier to compile and process
databases of personal information. Current privacy regulations may
serve to regulate the large databases maintained by credit companies
and consumer manufacturing companies, although even this claim is
questioned. What happens when, for example, any individual can use a
tiny video camera to record people passing into a particular store,
face-recognition software to identify those people, publicly-available
databases to find those people’s addresses and personal data, and then
create marketing pitches based on the stores they have entered? Who
will control access to information? In the field of genetics, many laws
have been introduced, but not always implemented, to protect the
privacy of medical records so that, for example, insurance companies
will not be privy to individual health profiles. But is that fair to
the investors in insurance companies, whose business model is based on
the assumption that risks can be fairly identified and apportioned
across groups? How can the claims and needs of individuals,
corporations, other groups, and the state be adjudicated?

National and international political issues

Much of the U.S. government’s investment in
nanotechnology is driven in part by global economic concerns, a
perceived need to maintain technological leadership. What obligations
does a nation have to share technological developments with other
countries, especially economic allies? In what ways is the development
of technological leadership a force in global politics? The
relationship between the developed world and developing countries is a
particular concern, as a recent Canadian study suggests (Court et al.
2004). Even within a country such as the United States, what
obligations are there for sharing technological development across the
country? Several states, for example, are creating ‘nano centers’ in
the hope that nano-based businesses will locate there, with attendant
economic benefits. Questions of benefit and obligation, of resource
allocation, are fundamentally political questions, in the ‘good’ sense
of politics as a tool for balancing competing interests, values, needs,
and responsibilities in ways that yield the best outcome for both
individuals and the community at large.

Intellectual property issues

Like other ‘emerging technologies’ that are
tightly linked to basic scientific research, nanotechnology generates
intellectual property that is perceived as valuable and thus protected
by patents. Various laws, regulations, and treaties govern the
relationship between ‘the public good’ and the protections offered by
patents. These rules vary across nations, and even within any one
country there is not necessarily agreement on what should be patentable
and how the benefits of protected intellectual property should be
shared. In the United States, where much nanotechnology research is
funded by government grants, the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act encourages
universities to seek patents, on the grounds that such protection will
ultimately encourage universities to transfer technology into the
commercial sector, yielding economic, i.e. social, return as
well as intellectual return on the government investment. Research
studies on the effects of Bayh-Dole, however, have illustrated the
potential unintended consequences, such as restricted dissemination of
faculty research, delays in publication, deleted information, and –
most ominous to those who believe academic research should be ‘pure’ in
its motivations – a change in direction of faculty research toward
projects with commercial potential (Thursby & Thursby 2003, Jensen et
al.
2003). New questions arise: Do existing rules and regulations function
in the nano-oriented economy? Are there differences between
nanotechnology and, say, genomics research that should be explored?
Does the close association of entrepreneurial companies with particular
university-based researchers compromise the ‘public’ mission of
research universities, or does it enhance the ability of students to
explore technological developments that can contribute to the public
good? Is a different language needed for discussing the interaction of
funding, ownership, development, and returns? How can the interests of
public and private be balanced?

Human enhancement

Among the applications of nanotechnology that
some researchers consider ‘science fiction’, while others are actively
attempting to implement, are enhancements to human memory, physical
strength, and other characteristics. Though usually framed as attempts
to monitor or repair ailments or disabilities such as Parkinson’s
disease or genetic abnormalities, some of these technologies can
simultaneously be used to control or enhance particular human
characteristics in ‘normal’ humans as well. These possibilities raise
many of the same issues as stem cell research and other aspects of
biotechnology: defining the boundary between treatment and change,
establishing common understandings of what counts as ‘human’ and
‘natural’, the rights and needs of the ailing and their families versus
broad social interests in establishing clear guidelines that a broad
mainstream of society can support, the role of religion and morality in
public life and in the governance of science, and so on. As with so
many of the issues listed above, the ‘right’ answer is not clear, and
neither is the way forward. How might social consensus be achieved on
such issues? Who should determine what research and what applications
can or should be developed? On the issue of implants that might relieve
symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, for example, I have heard researchers
arguing that they should continue their research because ‘ultimately,
it is a decision between the patient and his or her surgeon’. Others
have argued, as the atomic scientists of World War II did, that
research scientists have a moral obligation to guard against misuse of
their research. How can such issues be resolved?

4. The common frame

What holds each of the issues above together,
the principle that links the individual items into a common frame, is
that all involve questions of fairness, equity, justice, and especially
power in social relationships. That is what makes them ‘ethical’
issues. In each case, not only are legitimate questions possible about
how nanotechnology research and application should develop, but even
more fundamental questions exist about how to make decisions and who
should control those decisions. These fundamental questions are asking
about the source of power in societies with unequal social
distributions of power.

Yet, precisely because the ‘top-down’
approach to
defining social and ethical issues has separated ‘social and ethical
issues’ from economic, political, national security, and other issues,
the exercise of power has been hidden even in the definition of what is
legitimate to study. Consider the interaction of economics, workforce,
and safety issues, for example. Addressing the need to create safe
working environments for manufacturing nanomaterials will require
social negotiations for setting standards and levels of acceptable
risk, a political process in which manufacturers and their workers will
bring different levels of power. If economic, workforce, and safety
issues have been excluded from the definition of ‘social and ethical
issues’, then the place of power in the negotiations can be hidden,
with rhetoric focusing more on technical safety or national
competitiveness – both important issues, but ones clearly different
than allocations of power.

Though scientists often complain about what
they
perceive as a lack of social power, they are in fact one of the most
respected social groups in society and their judgments are highly
regarded (National Science Board 2004). In the United States, in
particular, ‘expertise’ is a valuable social resource, and in times of
political conflict, such as in debates about stem cells, nuclear power,
or global warming, competing groups fight to claim the mantle of
‘science’. When individual scientists or scientific groups argue that
because they interpret available evidence to say that a
particular technology is possible or not possible, and that therefore
development should proceed or be abandoned, they are claiming the
social power granted to them by society. The difficulty comes when, as
necessarily happens in areas of emerging technology, the scientific
community itself is unsure of what is possible or not possible. Then
power becomes a liability, an invocation or imperative to take action
without consultation when the group in fact needs other perspectives.
Defining such technical issues as not part of ‘social and
ethical issues’ prevents us from seeing the interdependence of science,
technology, and society with which I began my argument.

I do not want in any way to be read as saying
that
scientists have power illegitimately or inappropriately; I want only to
emphasize the importance of recognizing the linkage among social groups
and social power. For other groups also have social power, such as
large corporations, organized ethnic enclaves, labor, and the elderly.
The ethical challenge is to find ways for these groups to manage their
competing interests, making clear what obligations and opportunities
they perceive, exercising their power in responsible ways – including
acknowledging the power held by others and the flexible boundaries
between their interests.

At this point, other issues that are
frequently
listed as ‘social and ethical issues’ in nanotechnology enter the
discussion. These include studies of public opinion about, media
coverage of, rhetoric in, and history of nanotechnology. Do the
principles of equity, fairness, justice, and power allow us to include
these issues in a carefully defined ‘social and ethical issues’
category? Or must we start listing them in some new grouping?

Consider first the media and public
opinion issues.
Many people in the nanotechnology community worry that media coverage
of nanotechnology focuses too much on risks and not enough on benefits.
They believe that the risks have been overstated, and they worry that
media coverage may affect public opinion, making it difficult to
achieve the promise that they see for nanotechnology.[6]
They point frequently to the example of genetically modified organisms,
which many, but by no means all, scientists believe was unfairly
tarnished with safety concerns. The nano community does not want
nanotechnology to be what they perceive to be prematurely prevented
from development. This seems clearly to be a question of power: the
nanotechnology research community wants to be able to define what
constitutes appropriate development of the field, without fear that
some other social group – for example, a politically-savvy coalition of
nanotechnology opponents or advocates of a particular direction in
nanotechnology research – might exercise its power to direct
nanotechnology.

Tied to questions about media coverage are rhetorical
issues,
including analysis of the images, both textual and visual, associated
with nanotechnology. Again, many proponents of nanotechnology worry
that images of ‘grey goo’ or of self-replicating nanobots that could
take over the world, as in Michael Crichton’s Prey,
misrepresent the risks of nanotechnology and could affect public
opinion. Clearly, such concerns raise the same issues of power as the
concerns about media coverage. But, like issues such as intellectual
property or workforce preparation, rhetorical issues can also be
addressed in ways that do not directly deal with ethical concerns.
Rhetorical analysis can show, for example, how the use of particular
phrases, such as ‘more changes in the next 30 years than we saw in all
of the last century’, can set expectations for inventors and investors.[7]
It can also show how images of ‘revolution’ can be used both to promote
a technology by highlighting the new and exciting opportunities and to
criticize it by emphasizing its disruptive elements. If, through some
exercise of power, we were to use some arbitrary definition of ‘ethical
issues’ that included some rhetorical issues, but excluded others, we
would miss the inherent interweaving of social and technical.

The final set of issues often labeled as
‘social and ethical’ are historical and philosophical issues,
of the sort addressed in this journal. Such issues clearly raise
questions of fairness, equity, and power – indeed, it is often through
historical and philosophical research that such questions are most
clearly identified and presented. History and philosophy also make
clear the complexity of scientific development, in ways that show the
interweaving of social, ethical, and technical issues. Historians and
philosophers have demonstrated clearly that science and technology do
not develop entirely through a pure internal logic, but exist only in a
social matrix of funding, institutions, personnel, politics, and
culture. Studying the history and philosophy of nanotechnology as it
emerges is likely both to confirm previous understandings of how
science, technology, and society interact, and simultaneously to pose
new questions about the interactions, as the social matrix shapes the
development of nanotechnology and is as well shaped by the new
technology. Though such studies may challenge the power of science to
maintain its boundaries separate from society, they represent our
deepest understanding of the integration of ‘social and ethical issues’
throughout the nano – and indeed all of the technical – world.

5. Conclusion

The ability to see principles of fairness,
equity, justice, and especially power – in short, the key social
interactions that shape the co-existence of science and society – in so
many aspects of nanotechnology suggests they can provide the frame on
which to build a broader definition of ‘social and ethical issues’.
Indeed, the attempts to define ‘social and ethical issues’ narrowly is
itself an exercise of power that can prevent us from understanding how
central social issues are to the development of scientific knowledge
and its implementation through technology in the modern world.

Thus at the same time that we congratulate
the nano
community for embracing studies of ‘social and ethical issues’, we
should be wary of the attempt to draw boundaries between those issues
and ‘technical’ ones. As I have tried to show in this paper, the
‘top-down’ attempt to separate some social issues from others hides
from us the degree to which power operates as a unifying principle
across many issues. Even more so, the attempt to separate social and
ethical issues from other areas of nanotechnology research shields us
from understanding the ways that equity, justice, and power are
inherent elements of science and technology. We must allow ‘social and
ethical issues’ to emerge from the bottom up, through the nano
community, wherever they appear.

I will conclude by noting that nanotechnology
may
not be any different than any other area of emerging science and
technology. Virtually every argument of this paper would hold if the
words ‘biotechnology’ or ‘information science’ or ‘cognitive science’
were substituted for ‘nanotechnology’. Social and ethical issues
permeate science and technology. Only the exercise of power prevents us
from seeing that.

Acknowledgements

An earlier draft of this paper was prepared
for the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, and I thank the
social and ethical issues coordinators from NNIN institutions for their
comments. Many of my ideas on nanotechnology have been developed in
conversation with Stephen Hilgartner, but my expression of them here is
entirely my own and he should not be blamed for my lapses. I also thank
two anonymous reviewers for pressing me to make my argument stronger.

Notes

[1] See, for
example, 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act
2003.

[2] For example, a
workshop on
‘safety and environmental issues’ was held in December 2004 in Atlanta,
Georgia, organized by the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure
Network (NNIN); the organizers represented a separate branch of the
NNIN management than the ‘social and ethical issues’ branch.

[3] See, for
example, a recent
British report jointly produced by the Royal Academy of Engineering and
the Royal Society (2004) and a report from the Büro für
Technikfolgen-Abschätzung of the German Bundestag (TAB 2004).

[4] The question
of whether
nanotechnology is ‘inter-’, ‘multi-’, or ‘trans-’ disciplinary is in
fact one of the first questions posed in the Call for Papers for the
joint special issue of Hyle and Techne on ‘Nanotech
Challenges’. I leave that debate to others, but note merely that the
question of how to describe cutting-edge research is a recurring one in
American science. See, for example, Kohlstedt et al. (1999, pp.
104ff, 163-165).

[5] Except where I
have drawn a
particular issue from a particular source, or where some canonical
reference seems useful, I have not attempted to identify the sources
for the ideas listed here. I believe they are sufficiently widespread
or easy to imagine (think of a mathematical text’s injunction that ‘it
is left to the reader to show…’) that no references are needed.

[6] There is
little substantive
data to support these claims. Both general data on media coverage of
science and public opinion and specific data on other controversial
subjects such as biotechnology and stem cells show that media coverage
and public opinion are overwhelmingly positive (National Science Board
2004, Nisbet & Lewenstein 2002, Nisbet et al. 2003).
Preliminary studies support the belief that the situation will be the
same in nanotechnology (Lewenstein et al. 2005; Cobb et al.
2004).

[7] The quote is
from Mihail Roco, director of the National Nanotechnology Initiative,
and appeared in the Houston Business Journal on 16 January 2004.

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Kohlstedt, S.G., M. Sokal, & B.V.
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